User blog:Kattusite/Category Guidelines
In an effort to clarify some of the points I made in my last blog post, I'm writing some short and simple guidelines regarding categories, which are based a combination of this wiki's and Wikipedia's respective manuals of style. General Guidelines The most important idea to remember is that a page should never belong to both a category and a parent category of that category at the same time. In other words, if membership in one category implies that a page must be contained within another category (or categories), the page should only be classified under the most specific category that describes it. For example, Category:Gameplay (Payday 2) obviously refers only to gameplay mechanics from the second Payday game, PAYDAY 2. If a page is categorized under Category:Gameplay (Payday 2), it is implied that it can also be described by Category:PAYDAY 2, so it is not necessary to explicitly categorize the page under Category:PAYDAY 2. Because this wiki describes content from only Payday: The Heist or Payday 2, virtually every page can be considered to be a member of Category:PAYDAY 1 or Category:PAYDAY 2. While these two categories are the ultimate parents of nearly every page on the wiki, they themselves are not a child of any other category, so they can be said to be top-level categories. The categories themselves should be nearly devoid of pages, because there is almost always a more specific categorization than PAYDAY 1 or PAYDAY 2, and only the most specific categorization is necessary. Several other categories follow a similar pattern; that is, they serve mostly as parent categories for other categories and only rarely contain content pages. A non-exhaustive list follows: *Category:DLC (Payday 2) *Category:Weapon mod *Category:Primary weapons (Payday 2) *Category:Secondary weapons (Payday 2) *Category:Weapons (Payday 2) *Category:Skills Unless special circumstances exist, do not add pages to these categories. In some of the examples below, I use the terms explicit membership and implicit membership to describe categorization. Explicit membership occurs only when a page is added to a category. Once a page has been removed from a category, the explicit membership ends. Implicit membership occurs when a page is added to a category that is a child of one or many other parent categories. A page is implicitly a member of every parent category of the page's explicit and implicit categories. Another way to restate the original guideline is that a page should never be both explicitly and implicitly a member of a single category at the same time. If a page is categorized under Category:Grip, it is improper to categorize it under Category:Weapon mod as well, because this would cause the page to have explicit membership (by virtue of its categorization) and implicit membership (by virtue of the fact that Grip is a child of Weapon mod) in Category:Weapon mod at the same time. Examples Let's look at some examples of why this works. CAR-4 We'll look at the page for the CAR-4. This page is presently a member of only one category: Category:Assault Rifles. However, it is logical to assume that because the CAR-4 is an assault rifle, it must also be a primary weapon (there is no such thing as a secondary assault rifle). It is also logical to say that the CAR-4 is a weapon, and that it is a part of PAYDAY 2. Surely enough, if we look at the category hierarchy for the Assault Rifle category, we see that it is a child of Category:Primary weapons (Payday 2), which is a child of Category:Weapons (Payday 2), which is a child of Category:Equipment (Payday 2) (a rather technical category containing only weapons and deployables), which is in turn a child of the top-level Category:PAYDAY 2. Explicit Categories *Assault Rifles Implicit Categories *Primary Weapons (Payday 2) *Weapons (Payday 2) *Equipment (Payday 2) *PAYDAY 2 Clarion The Clarion is a somewhat more complicated example still, but is still fairly straightforward if we apply the same basic concepts as above. Like the CAR-4, the Clarion is an Assault Rifle, so it is explicitly a member of Category:Assault Rifles. With this classification comes implicit membership in all of the parent categories of Category:Assault Rifles. However, the Clarion is also a DLC weapon, so hasty editors may categorize it (incorrectly) under Category:DLC (Payday 2). The proper categorization would be under Category:Gage Assault Pack, which is a child of Category:DLC (Payday 2). Because it is logically implied that members of Category:Gage Assault Pack must also be members of Category:DLC (Payday 2), it is not necessary to explicitly state the implicit connection. Explicit Categories *Assault Rifles *Gage Assault Pack Implicit Categories *Primary Weapons (Payday 2) *Weapons (Payday 2) *Equipment (Payday 2) *PAYDAY 2 *DLC (Payday 2) Street Sweeper The Street Sweeper is a more complicated example because shotguns do not conform to some typical rules. Shotguns, unlike every other type of weapon in the game, have both Primary and Secondary varieties. For this reason, membership in Category:Shotguns is not sufficient evidence to suggest membership in either Category:Primary weapons (Payday 2) or Category:Secondary weapons (Payday 2). You may notice that Category:Shotguns is a child of Category:Weapons (Payday 2), and not Category:Primary weapons (Payday 2) or Category:Secondary weapons (Payday 2). Therefore, it is both acceptable and necessary to classify the Street Sweeper explicitly as a member of Category:Secondary weapons (Payday 2). Of course, Shotguns will be an explicitly stated category, because the Street Sweeper is a shotgun. Moreover, it was introduced as part of the Gage Shotgun Pack, so it should be categorized under Category:Gage Shotgun Pack DLC. Because this category is a child of Category:DLC (Payday 2), Street Sweeper's membership in Category:DLC (Payday 2) is implicit and should not be stated. Explicit Categories *Shotguns *Secondary weapons (Payday 2) *Gage Shotgun Pack DLC Implicit Categories *Weapons (Payday 2) *Equipment (Payday 2) *PAYDAY 2 *DLC (Payday 2) Category:Blog posts